Stress Therapy
by wulfiesacolyte
Summary: Inu-yasha gets pissed (yet again) about Kagome's preoccupation with school, and decides to take matters into his own hands by throwing her math book in a river. One-shot.


I'm at school right now, supposed to be doing math homework. As you can see, I'm not. Poor math book. *snort* Note: I have no idea where this came from. I was half-heartedly reading Inu- yasha fanfics, got bored, opened Word, and typed out "Humm." Then all this other stuff came out, and it seemed to make some sort of sense so I fixed the grammar a bit, and voila. Inspiration is a funny thing. Too bad I can't get inspired to write anything I might actually be able to SELL. . . -_-  
  
Disclaimer: Inu-yasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. Kagome's deceased math textbook belongs-well, belonged-to Kagome.  
  
Kagome's Textbook, R.I.P.  
  
*---*  
  
"Humm."  
  
Kagome looked from her algebraic text to the hanyou's perplexed expression, quickly biting her tongue to keep from laughing. "What is it, Inu-yasha?"  
  
"That makes no sense." Noticing her own confusion, the dog demon pulled one hand free from within his sleeve and touched a claw to the first equation on the page. "Why does that squiggly line equal that squarish one?"  
  
This time, Kagome did laugh. "That 'squiggly line' is the symbol for pi, and that other one means 'squared.' You see, pi times 'r' equals-"  
  
"Why do you have to learn this stuff?" Inu-yasha interrupted, his tapping fingers an easily discernable sign that his attention had already begun to wander. Kagome's appearance flickered slightly, annoyed at his injection, but she suffered it and went into the practiced speech her high school had drummed into her malleable psyche.  
  
"There is math all around us. In the patterns of the leaves falling, to the rotations of the planets and constella-"  
  
Again she was cut off short by his impatient whine. "No, no. I mean why do -you-, Kagome, need to know this? Going to be an astrologer?" he added, comment accompanied by a sardonic grin.  
  
Gradually Kagome's brows lowered and her visage grew dark enough to cause his smirk to fade. "That's -astronomer-, and how do you know I'm not? You don't know anything about what I want to grow up to be!" Suddenly slamming the math book shut in his face and in one motion jumping to her feet, Kagome left Inu-yasha to his confusion and crossed over to the small shrine, where Sango and the others were sharing some rice balls. "Sango," she said quietly, careful to stare straight at her. "Mind if I join?"  
  
Pausing amidst delicately eating her rice ball, Sango glanced up and smiled at her companion. "Of course, Kagome." She patted the cloth beside her, indicating that Kagome should rest there. From within Sango's lap, Kirara lifted her head and mewled in greeting.  
  
Kagome returned the smile and patted the kitten upon her head. Kneeling gracefully, Kagome nodded at Sango and Miroku with a funny sort of determined expression on her face. "You guys, at least, don't decide my future for me."  
  
Miroku blinked, then smiled and nodded, eyes wide with bafflement. Sango sighed, instantly understanding, and offered Kagome a rice ball before her thoughts could descend further.  
  
-- Beside the broken boulder that shadowed the grassy hillside, Inu-yasha stared at the posse disbelievingly. -What- in all the hells had set her off this time?! Snorting, he shook his head. Useless to speculate; the girl simply did not make sense.  
  
Besides. Why was she so concerned over this "mathematics" stuff, anyway? The school force-fed her all of it, and why should she care what the school wanted? Inu-yasha had no problem with his illiteracy; he was almost proud of it, as he believed that book-learning detracted from martial and survival skills, in other words, the real smarts. All that mathematics and Engrish and history-that was just her world's way of controlling their youth. Well, they weren't going to poison -his- Kagome's mind. Inu-yasha's head inclined sharply, his decision made. All that school stuff only served to take Kagome away from her real duties: finding the Shikon shards and defeating Naraku. Well, no more of that.  
  
Lost in her distress, Kagome had simply left the book where she had been sitting, beside her mountainous manila backpack and with a pencil and paper lodged somewhere between the pages. The text was in his hands within seconds of his decision, and Inu-yasha spared it hardly a glance before checking to make sure she was still ignoring him, then setting off towards the scent of water. Let's see her lecture me now, he thought with a twitch of his eye. Just because -I- know what's best for her!  
  
The gentle burbling of the depleted riverbed heralded his approach, as white and red erupted into a scene of forest green and sand and light blue, and he crossed from the forest's edge to the brook in a single hop. "Let's see her tell me off!" he muttered, audibly now, staring at the frightened minnows with a baleful eye. "Telling me I don't know what her future holds! Well, it ain't holding THIS!" Inu-yasha slammed his fist down, throwing the book and its contents into the shallow water with a tremendous splash and the defeated rustling of pages before they were completely submerged.  
  
The feeling of regret was as immediate as the soaking of the papers. Inu- yasha's ears flattened against his skull without him even realizing it, and he crouched against his folded knees, eyes darting from side to side suspiciously. The memory of Kagome's many (MANY) invocations of the prayer beads about his neck reverberated in his cranium, and Inu-yasha winced at each recollection, backbone twinging painfully in response. He whirled around at the sound of footsteps, but saw nothing but slightly-shuddering tree boughs and a lone hare that cocked an ear at him wonderingly. Inu- yasha growled, startling the rabbit and sending it franticly leaping away, and Inu-yasha stared after it mutely, lost in thought. What was Kagome gonna do, after she. . .?  
  
Oh, s**t. Inu-yasha jumped from his crouch and turned towards the river once more, staring down the length of it and trying to find the textbook he had so recently tossed in. There, that yellow thing lodged between a pebble and some gooky waterweed-that was the pencil. And that wad of white in that nook-the single sheet of paper. But the book, where was it? Frantically he started trotting down the bank and scanned as he went, eyeing each deceptively calm eddy and current in his frenetic search.  
  
Nothing, nothing, nothing. The book was no where, and had left neither hint nor hair behind. He couldn't find it anywhere, or-  
  
Hey.  
  
Maybe Kagome wouldn't notice yet. Maybe she would think she had left it back in a village, and not suspect Inu-yasha of purposefully destroying it. Hey! If that was true, he was home free! Heck, if he couldn't find the book, then there wasn't a -chance- that Kagome could. Beaming with newfound pride of accomplishment, Inu-yasha left the river's edge and traipsed back into the forest, leisurely hacking out his own path and finding the camp through his nose alone. And if he got away with destroying this book, maybe he could get away with destroying another (hopefully that damned Engrish liter'chure-he hated that thing), and pretty soon she would have no school books, and no reason to go back there. Maybe he could even take care of that Hojo kid the same way, and then he-  
  
As soon as Inu-yasha broke through the barrier and saw Kagome standing with something in her hands, skin reddened and limbs quivering with rage, he knew the s**t had hit the fan. He blinked. Once, twice. A few more times. "Kag..o...m-"  
  
"SIT!!" Inu-yasha yelped as the soft grass and soil of the hillside pounced at him from below. The flesh of his belly met with a small pebble in the dirt as hard as if it had been shot from a crossbow, and Inu-yasha hiccupped, trying to regain his respiratory pattern. Cracking one eye open, he peered upward and located the girl, both hands balled into fists at her sides and the inundated remnants of a textbook at her feet. "Ka-"  
  
"SIT! SITSITSITSITSITSITSITSITSIT. . .SIT!!!!!"  
  
Bam. Bambambambambambambambambam. BAM. Inu-yasha whimpered.  
  
"Look what Sango found when she went to the river for some water?" Kagome hissed while sneering, before forcing a derisive laugh. "Inu-yasha, if you EVER-and I do mean EVER-get near my school supplies again, _I_will_cut_you_into_pieces_with_your_own_sword_!!!" She whirled about in a flurry of green minishirt and nighshade locks, stamping loudly to the other side of the hill despite the dampening soil. From somewhere between three and six handspans under the ground, Inu-yasha managed a strangled moan. There was only one word he could even bring to mind: Owwwww.  
  
A few minutes of strained breathing, and he was able to think clearly again. Well, clearly enough to damn himself internally with such ferocity and vulgarity that he would have put a corrupted daimyo to shame. Okay. Scrap that plan. Well, maybe it would work, if he found a deeper stream that was far away. Then he could go through with the other books, and-  
  
Wait, no. Too late. She already knew he had it in him to raze her books, and now whenever something bad occurred to them, she would automatically blame him. Beneath a layer of wet soil, Inu-yasha's face paled. Ooooh, s****t. If -anything- bad happened to her books. That included things she might do herself, like accidentally leaving her Engrish book under her pallet back at the Bone-Eater's village, which she had never done before but there was always a chance she mi-  
  
Oh, s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t. He was in for it now, for the long haul even. How did that saying go? Oh, right. 'Oh what webs we weave when first we deceive.'  
  
How true. Hooooow true.  
  
And, by the way, ow.  
  
*---*  
  
There. Did you laugh? I hope you did. I think this was supposed to be funny, I'm not sure. I know a lot of people write about the too-many-sits gag, but it seemed to fit. Anyway, yeah.  
  
Please review. You don't have to, though. 


End file.
